Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday the launch of an Open Budget website for the public to have access to information about the state’s budget, Gannett’s Haley Viccaro reports.

[1]OpenBudget.ny.gov[2] provides budget data and easy-to-read tools and charts to make the financial data more understandable. The website also includes the option to download the data in various document types for analysis.

“Open Budget is bringing the people back into government by taking budget data out of government file cabinets and making it available to the public for the first time in an easy-to-access, downloadable form. This will facilitate research, analysis, and innovation,” Cuomo said in a statement.

The website includes actual spending information for this year and dates back to 1994. Budget appropriations and capital appropriations can also be searched either statewide or by specific criteria.

Current and historical budgets can be searched and downloaded, which includes documents 60 years old when Nelson Rockefeller and Thomas Dewey were governors. Details about Cuomo’s 2013-14 proposed budget are also available on the website.

“Open Budget, as a first dramatic step in Open New York, will give average citizens and researchers the ability to determine where the money has been and where it will be going,” said Bob Freeman, executive director of the Committee on Open Government, in a statement.